LinkedIn Marketing Strategies: 19 Ways to Get More Leads on LinkedIn

Kate Kendall, the founder and CEO of CloudPeeps, a freelance platform and community that matches indie professionals with remote jobs, said she receives LinkedIn Inmails from people who don’t even know what she does.

Imagine receiving emails from people offering to sell you the same services you offer.

When you spam people, you lose the opportunity to sell to them forever.

Chris Spurvey used LinkedIn to land large, multi-year contracts and built a company that got acquired by KPMG Canada.

Neil Patel recently shared on his podcast how LinkedIn generated $38,491 for his business in a single month. That’s not too bad when you consider that Facebook brought him $42,544 the same month and he has over 900,000 Facebook fans.

When you use the right strategies, LinkedIn can become your best source of valuable business leads.

In this article, I’ll share 19 powerful LinkedIn marketing strategies to get highly qualified business leads from LinkedIn on a consistent basis.

1. Write blog posts specifically for your connections on LinkedIn

Facebook and Twitter get a lot more attention than LinkedIn, but LinkedIn serves a greater purpose. LinkedIn is the best place to connect with serious professionals like you.

Friends on LinkedIn are called Connections.

Connections can be your real-life networks like family, friends, colleagues, school and university pals. They can also be people you met on the web.

Now, see your LinkedIn connections as a group of trusted friends. What do they have in common?

Pretend you’re sitting around a table with friends. You respect and value their time. And it’s your turn to speak. What would you say?

Whatever you say should interest your friends. They should come out of the meeting seeing you as an intelligent person.

For example, Douglas R.E. Ries is a Sr. Commercial Team Manager at Protiro, Inc., a Staffing and Recruiting firm in Denver, Colorado.

He published an article on LinkedIn, titled “Denver Becomes the Nation’s Second-Most Attractive City for Tech Jobs.”

Anyone who lives in Denver will be interested in reading this article. No wonder the article has gained 4,528 likes, 1,075 shares, and 117 comments so far at the time of writing despite Ries having only 1,449 LinkedIn connections.

Most of his connections are people who live in Denver. That’s something they have in common.

When you publish an article on a topic most people in your LinkedIn network are interested in, it gets shared and liked. And when it does, it raises your profile and reputation on the LinkedIn platform. That alone can drive huge leads to your business.

2. Send LinkedIn invitations with a personalized note

Think about one key goal you want to accomplish in your business this year.

Maybe it’s acquiring 100 high-value clients, making the perfect hire for a specific task, or forming win-win partnerships with complementary companies, there’s a high chance that you need some help. You can’t do it alone.

LinkedIn is the perfect place to meet people who can help you achieve your business goals.

The first step to connecting with anyone on LinkedIn is to send them an invitation.

LinkedIn allows you to include a message when sending an invitation.

Most people don’t include messages in their invites probably because they find it time-consuming or they’re lazy. Some people write generic messages like “I will like to connect with you on LinkedIn.”

You should do a little research to learn about the person you’re inviting to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Including a personalized message shows you’re serious about connecting. You’re sending a positive feeling, and that can make them more interested in you, which can have a great lasting impact on your business.

3. Educate and inform your audience on LinkedIn

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to know people who eat, sleep and breathe LinkedIn. The same thing can be said of other social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

These are the people you should make your fans. They don’t get their news from anywhere else except LinkedIn.

They rarely meet new people on other social channels. They don’t consume content anywhere else other than LinkedIn.

Neil Brand is a sales manager at The Energy Check, a renewable energy consultancy firm in the United Kingdom.

Brand is a LinkedIn enthusiast. He asked a question about getting a new car.

There are a lot of people like this who ask questions on LinkedIn rather than Quora. I call them LinkedIn enthusiasts.

Educate these people. Inform them through the content you publish on LinkedIn.

When you create content outside your field, LinkedIn enthusiasts will be interested because they spend most of their time on the world’s largest professional network.

A like or share from an Influencer on LinkedIn can drive lots of business leads.

How do you build relationships with influencers?

Firstly, you need to take yourself more seriously by doing what influencers do. Influencers gravitate toward people who are like them.

If you’re not actively trying to make a name for yourself, it’ll be difficult to appear interesting to influencers.

Secondly, you should start reading and commenting on influencers’ articles on LinkedIn.

When you make intelligent comments on influencers’ articles, they’ll notice you. Their followers will notice you too.

Thirdly, reach out to influencers. Send them emails. Send them LinkedIn’s InMails.

Building a relationship with an influencer can help you acquire more clients.

5. Be human on LinkedIn

Tactics can be great. Tools will save you time. But social media is all about building relationships with real people like you.

To succeed on LinkedIn, like every other social network, you have to be your true self.

The truer you are on LinkedIn, the bigger the loyal audience you’ll build on the platform. And the bigger your loyal audience, the more sales you’ll make.

Don’t make comments that aren’t genuine. I’ve seen people make unrelated comments.

Don’t write a comment without reading. It’s better to avoid commenting when you have nothing to add.

Another way of being a human on LinkedIn is by actively engaging with your connections and followers.

Respond to comments made by your fans. Respond to mentions. Like comments and mentions. That tells your fans that you care about them.

6. Join active LinkedIn groups and participate in discussions

There’s a LinkedIn group for almost every industry.

For example, if you’re in the transportation industry, the Transport and Logistics group is where you should be. The group has 37,180 members. A connection of mine who owns a transportation company is a member of this group.

The Freight and Logistics group boast about 127,000 members.

These are groups you should be part of if you’re in the transportation industry.

Join LinkedIn groups that are related to your schools, previous companies, expertise, industry, interests, and locality. And be an active member in each of these groups.

By being active in LinkedIn groups, you can develop relationships with key people that will drive high-value clients to your business.

7. Learn enough about potential connections before reaching out

Aja Frost, a writer at The Muse shared an email template she claims will get you a meeting with anyone you ask.

Below is the template.

“Dear Monica,

My name is Aja Frost, and I’m a college student who’s interning in the city until mid-August. Your career path is very inspirational to me: I don’t know very many people who have worked in marketing at Google, Facebook, and Apple. As an aspiring marketer, I’d love to learn more about which skills you’ve used the most and what you’d expect from an entry-level employee in your department.

I’m sure you’re busy, so even 20 minutes would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Aja”

The above message shows the sender knows the recipient. The sender did a bit of research about the recipient.

To know the companies they’ve worked, and the incredible contributions they’ve made at their previous and current companies shows you know them.

Making the right connection on LinkedIn can double your annual revenue.

Unless you know about people and show a deep interest in them, they won’t give you their priceless attention.

The good news is that most LinkedIn users fill their profiles with complete information about their professional lives. All you need to do is read their profiles.

If you need additional information, go to their websites, blogs, company profile pages and Google.

When you believe you’ve learned enough about a potential connection, then reach out to them.

8. Post 20 times per month on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is my favorite social platform because it’s ideal for B2B companies.

There’s another reason why I like LinkedIn than other social sites.

According to a study, LinkedIn sends nearly four times more people to your homepage than Twitter and Facebook.

If LinkedIn can drive traffic to your main site than any other social referral source and you’re a B2B company, then you should spend more time on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn users head straight to your home page rather than a blog post or a resource page. Why most LinkedIn users do that is because they want to learn more about your company, its products and services and the people behind it. The home page is the perfect place to start doing that.

The best time to post on LinkedIn to gain maximum reach is during business hours. Avoid evenings, late afternoons and weekends.

LinkedIn found that posting 20 times by month will help you reach 60% of your audience.

9. Share awesome content on LinkedIn

You don’t have to be the creator of every content you share on LinkedIn. Share other people’s great content too.

Sharing other people’s content has a big benefit: It makes your connections see you as not being promotional.

10. Connect with people who likes and comment on your articles on LinkedIn Pulse

LinkedIn Pulse is LinkedIn’s own publishing platform. Note that LinkedIn Pulse is not a replacement for your blog.

Publishing on Pulse helps you get more engagement from your direct and indirect network.

When people who aren’t directly connected to you (second and third-degree network) see your post and engage with it in the form of commenting, liking or sharing, it gives the opportunity to make them part of your first-degree network.

Receiving engagement from people you don’t know gives you a big reason to connect with them. It makes connecting easier because you’re no longer a stranger to them.

For example, receiving comments like the ones in the below screenshot indicates the commenters will be interested in connecting with you.

11. Position your company as a leader and reliable source of information

LinkedIn users value the reputation and achievements of the company they deal with.

When professionals visit LinkedIn, they look for experience, credibility, and someone or company their network can vouch for.

The best way to achieve that is to position your company as a leader in its own niche and publish high-quality content on your blog and LinkedIn on a regular basis.

When people come back to your website, they should know that you know who they are. You should make them subscribe to your email newsletter and follow you on every active social channel.

12. Find emails of potential leads with Email Hunter

Email remains one of the best ways to connect with anyone. If there’s an email finder that can help you find the email address of a LinkedIn user, it’s Hunter.

Just install the plugin in your web browser, and you’ll be able to find any LinkedIn member’s email address.

The plugin tells you how confident it is in its result.

For example, the below screenshot shows that Hunter is 98% sure the email is correct. As you know, 98% is a high percentage.

Having someone’s email address means you can reach out to that person and tell them about your product or service.

13. Publish case studies on LinkedIn

Robert Hackman helps entrepreneurs and companies grow their revenue at Hackman and Associates, his consultancy firm.

Hackman wrote a case study, detailing how he assisted a manufacturing firm to turn declining sales into double-digit sales increase. That’s something his ideal clients want to read.

Publishing case studies like this improves people’s trust in your ability to deliver results for them.

14. Recycle other people’s content

Everything you see on the web today has been done in one form or another before. Content creators find unique ways to reuse old ideas.

I always see something new when I check my LinkedIn feed. But, in fact, these are content ideas I’ve seen many times before. They are interesting because they are told in new ways.

For instance, see the below screenshot of an update I’m reading as I write this.

As you can see, there’s nothing really new about that update. But you can put your spin on it.

By recycling other people’s content, you’ll have more valuable updates to share with your followers. And by sharing lots of valuable updates, you’ll gain more leads from the platform.

You can also recycle other people’s content by turning them into images, illustrations, charts, quotes and infographics and share them on LinkedIn.

15. Make the best use of LinkedIn’s Advanced Search

“Advanced Search” is my most cherished LinkedIn’s feature. The feature gives you the ability to search for anyone in any location, company, and industry.

With “Advanced Search,” you can find prospective clients by filling the correct details about them.

Let’s say my ideal customers are CEOs in the construction industry who live in the United States.

LinkedIn returned 45,058 people who matched my search input. That’s 45,058 people who may be interested in buying my service.

Now, I can start hunting the email of these CEOs using an email finder service like Hunter. I can also reach them through LinkedIn InMail.

When you have a quality product or service, LinkedIn makes selling easy because it provides the information and tools you need to make sales happen.

16. Create a professional profile on LinkedIn

Creating an attractive and professional LinkedIn profile is not, in itself, a tactic, but many people tend to overlook this important aspect.

If your LinkedIn profile isn’t well optimized for sales, it’ll be difficult to convert LinkedIn users into customers.

A good LinkedIn profile starts with your headshot and summary. These are the things people see first when they visit your profile.

I’ve seen people upload images of themselves in swimming pools and they use that on the world’s biggest professional network. That’s not a good way to say you’re a true professional.

Your profile summary should highlight your experience.

Before you write a summary of your LinkedIn profile, read the excellent summaries that have been written by people. I’m sure you have some people in your current network who have amazing summaries you can tweak to suit your experience.

17. Use a call to action

What do you want to achieve marketing on LinkedIn?

If your goal is to gain leads through LinkedIn, then you should ask your profile visitors to send you an email message. Put your email address on your LinkedIn profile.

Some LinkedIn users prefer talking with potential clients on the phone.

There are people whose aims are to increase their LinkedIn connections. When you visit their profile, the call-to-action you see asks you to send them an invitation.

I’ve also seen people who ask visitors to visit their company’s website. You should do that if you think that prospects will only learn more by visiting your website.

There should be a call-to-action on your LinkedIn profile. By not using a call-to-action, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to convert profile visitors.

18. Create a company page on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a high authority on search engines. By setting up a company page on LinkedIn, your company will gain more visibility, and your site will be recognized on Google.

So when people type your company’s name into the Google search box, your company’s LinkedIn page is likely to show up on the first page of search results. That increases trust in your business.

It’s good to keep your professional profile and company profile separate, which is why you should set up a company page.

A company page helps prospects learn more about your company than they will on your personal LinkedIn profile.

For example, it tells them how many employees you have, the year the company was founded, the address of its headquarters, and more.

The people in the network of your employees will also know your company. That increases your company’s reach on LinkedIn.

Maintaining a company page also allows you to promote your company’s most important news through LinkedIn sponsored posts.

19. Start a LinkedIn Group

This may be the hardest of all tactics on this page, but it can also be the most rewarding of them all.

When you have an active group that has more than 10,000 members, you automatically become a leader in your industry. LinkedIn will feature you as the owner of the group.

A group can drive more traffic to your site than any other medium on LinkedIn. Just put your website link in the group’s profile.

Maintaining a group will also grow your connections, as you’ll get daily invites from group members.

You also have the opportunity to send weekly emails to members of your group.

If you build an active and big group, your business will be overflowed with sales leads.

Thanks for reading and please share this content with your friends on social media.